"It's all I ever wanted to be," Deb Schmidt, R.N. said of her career as a nurse, even though oversupply of nurses when she graduated from high school made her parents question her choice.
Schmidt has spent 16 years as an "ortho nurse" on Mercy's orthopaedic floor, working with patients who are recovering from fractures or joint replacements.
After all that time, it's still what she wants to be.
Unlike 16 years ago when Schmidt made her career choice, today the health-care field faces a shortage of nurses. That's just one of the many changes Schmidt has seen.
"We can fix so much more surgically today," she says.
"Some of the patients we see have multiple problems, such as diabetes or cardiac problems. Previously, people like that couldn't have joint replacements." These types of cases present new challenges for the nursing staff.
At the same time, she adds, most patients spend less time in the hospital.
When I started," she recalls, "a total joint-replacement patient was here nearly two weeks. Now it's three or four days." There is much more outpatient physical therapy and caregiving in the home.
Overall that's good, she says. "People do well getting back into their own environments and normal routines."
For an ortho nurse, getting patients back on their feet is the main objective. It's also the most satisfying part of the job, Deb said.
"I'd like to be able to see the positive outcomes from the interventions we do for people. When they come in, they can't walk. When they go home, they're standing tall. And patients really appreciate what you do for them."
She enjoys her role as bedside nurse, Deb says, "because you get to communicate with everyone- patient, family, physician, social worker, pastor, physical therapist, dietitian, and occupational therapist. You are pivotal in coordinating their care."
Schmidt knows plenty about coordinating people and tasks. She and her husband, Regis, own a farm near Watkins and both work on and off the farm. Having grown up on a farm during the economically difficult 1980s, she jokes that she should have known better than to marry a farmer. But it was the life she loved, and she wanted her children to have the responsibilities and opportunities she had. Free time is spent working on 4H projects with her daughters Emily and Erin, and son Will, along with competing at fairs and pitching in at church.
Her life is a juggling act, Deb says, but when she's working on the ortho floor, she is focused. "We have to be thinking and concentrating at all times."
Deb, a Clinical Nurse II, enjoys the teamwork and camaraderie of the staff on the floor, and she assists in training new staff members. Mostly, she demonstrates her own version of the Mercy Touch, "caring for the patient in the way I would want my family to be cared for." I put myself in other people's shoes, and that helps in a lot of difficult situations."
